Romney correctly identified America’s burgeoning entitlement culture as a major obstacle to a Republican winning back the White House.
‘There are 47 per cent of the people who will vote for the President no matter what . . . who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it.’
Striking an almost defeatist note, he concluded: ‘I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their own lives.’
Romney’s leaked remarks caused a predictable storm of confected outrage, but his analysis was bang on the money. Just as Gordon Brown cynically constructed a client state in Britain to maximise Labour’s electoral advantage, so the Democrats deliberately drain the public purse to feed their supporters’ insatiable appetite for handouts.
When 47 per cent of the electorate depends to a greater or lesser degree on government largesse, the Democrats have only to target another four or five per cent of voters to secure a majority.
With the overall result pivoting on a handful of battleground states, Obama’s supporters concentrated successfully on turning out the Democratic base and convincing sufficient wavering independents that they would be hurt financially by a Romney victory.
This wasn’t a ‘hope and change’ election like 2008. Obama’s campaign this time was based on fear and loathing. » | Richard Littlejohn | Wednesday, November 07, 2012
